us.
We stayed out of her way, visiting with Konrad and keeping him company when he was not sleeping.
A messenger came to our house at dinnertime with the news that Polidori had disappeared.
Upon receiving my mother’s letter, the magistrate had sent a bailiff and two guards to Wollstonekraft Alley, only to find the apartment, and the laboratory beneath, consumed by flame. There was no sign of a body within the charred wreckage.
“No doubt he’s fled the city,” Mother said.
“He must have hired a carriage first thing in the morning and set out,” Elizabeth said.
Mother glanced back at the letter. “They’ve already sent men on the fastest horses to see if they can overtake him.”
“If he’s in a carriage,” I said, “they’ll catch him. The mountain roads are steep.”
But the news made me feel ill at ease. I did not like the fact that Polidori was still free and might, if he so chose, seek us out.
Late the next day Father returned home with Dr. Murnau. The two of them went at once to Konrad’s bedchamber, whereupon the doctor proceeded to examine my brother.
Elizabeth and Henry and I waited in the library, paging through books without reading.
“What will Father do when Mother tells him?” Elizabeth asked me.
“Well, the Frankenstein dungeons may once more have inmates.”
“Be serious, Victor.”
“You can have the larger cell. I don’t mind.”
This time she laughed.
The sun was beginning to set when Father appeared in the doorway, still in his riding clothes, looking exhausted but calm.
“Come with me,” he said to the three of us.
We followed him to his study, where Mother sat with Dr. Murnau.
“He’s healing, isn’t he?” I asked the doctor.
“Tomorrow I’ll take blood for study. But it seems the crisis has certainly passed.” He leaned his bony frame forward in his chair. “Victor, I understand you gave him a certain elixir a few nights past. I need to know its exact ingredients.”
“There was a rare lichen, from a tree in the Sturmwald,” I began.
“Describe it.”
“Pale brown, with a delicate shape like embroidery or coral. Usnea lunaria was its name,” I added, remembering suddenly.
The doctor pursed his lips, nodded. “What else?”
“Coelacanth oil,” I said. “And bone marrow from a human.”
I saw his eyes stray to my hand. “I will look at your wounds shortly. Anything else?”
“That’s all. But how Polidori prepared them, we don’t know.”
“Is it harmful?” Father asked Dr. Murnau.
“We’ll watch Konrad carefully for the next day or so, but he shows no signs of poisoning. Quite the opposite. These ingredients your son mentioned, they’re unusual and noisome, but it’s possible they might have had some beneficial effect. In folk medicines some lichens or fungi are often brewed as teas to combat infection or fever. As for the fish oil, many oils have been noted to have an invigorating effect on the patient, though we do not know why.”
“And the bone marrow?” Mother asked.
“A mystery,” said the doctor, pushing back his glasses. “Though one of my students once claimed that a crushed bone, amazingly, yielded a special concentration of vigorous blood cells. But, as to the usefulness of your elixir as a whole”-he floated his skeletal hands up into the air-“there’s no scientific proof. And there is no shortage of fabulist cures trumpeted by charlatans. I’d say you were very lucky, young Master Frankenstein, that this particular elixir was benign. I’ve seen some that have wrought very dire results indeed upon the human body.”
Father looked at me and Elizabeth severely. “You might have killed your brother.”
“We might also have saved his life!” I said, my temper flaring.
Dr. Murnau licked his lips nervously. “Victor, what we’ve witnessed is a coincidence-and a dangerous one if it convinces you that this elixir has any value.”
My heart beat in my ears. I said nothing. I didn’t need to convince him. The deed was done, and the truth was obvious to me: The elixir was real.
“Now listen carefully,” Father said to Elizabeth, Henry, and me. “Once Polidori is caught and tried, your involvement in this shameful affair will be public knowledge. But this is more than a question of embarrassment; it is a question of your innocence.”
“Alphonse,” said Mother, “you’re frightening them-and me.”
“Might we be charged, then?” Elizabeth asked uneasily.
“By the law’s definition, to practice alchemy you must profit by it, or actually administer your substances to a person,” Father said.
“It was I who administered it to Konrad,” I said quickly, for it was true. I had dripped it upon his tongue. “If anyone’s charged, it should be me.”
“That is not just,” said Elizabeth. “It may have been Victor’s hand that held the vial, but I stood beside him, and would have administered the elixir if he’d faltered. I am equally guilty.”
“And I,” said Henry, his head bowed.
“No one will ever know that Konrad took this elixir,” my father said. He looked at all of us in turn. “Dr. Murnau has already agreed to keep this in his confidence. And we must all of us keep the secret. I threw the elixir into the lake. That is what happened. I abhor a lie, but I will do it to protect my family.”
I wondered how many other lies my father had told over the years, how many secrets he kept from us.
“Are we agreed, then?” said Father. “Konrad never received the Elixir of Life.”
“Agreed,” said Elizabeth and Henry.
Father looked at me severely.
I met his gaze. “If I am asked to testify in court, I will not lie.”
“Victor,” Mother said, “don’t be absurd!”
I did not flinch from my father’s stories. My own voice seemed alien to me, hard and calm. “I will not mention Elizabeth or Henry. But I will not perjure myself. I helped create that elixir with my own sweat, and flesh and blood, and I administered it to my brother. And I cured him. If I’m to be jailed for that, so be it.”
My father’s eyebrows contracted, and he was about to speak, but then he changed his mind.
“We will talk more of this later.” He looked at Mother. “He is overwrought. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
But truly I did. My father would not make me a liar-nor would he take away my triumph.
Before I went to my bedchamber for the night, I visited Konrad’s room and found him still awake, reading by candlelight.
“Do you remember us giving it to you?” I asked, sitting beside his bed.
“I remember waking and seeing you all before me, but I thought it a dream-and such a pleasant one. I felt rejuvenated somehow.”
“Do you feel it in you, working?” I asked.
He gave a laugh. “Am I your patient now, Victor?”
“Not patient. Creation!” I said with a grin. “Come now, you must feel something! You have the Elixir of Life in you!” I imagined a great bubbling, a magical fermenting that released healing bodies throughout his blood to battle anything vile they encountered.
“If you must know, I feel as weak as a kitten-but remarkably… transformed.”
“That will be the elixir working hard, destroying the disease! It is bound to be tiring. But now you will not ever get ill again, you lucky dog.”
“Let me see your hand properly,” he said.
I placed it on my knee.
His gaze settled on it. When he looked up, his eyes were wet. “Does it hurt still?”
